There is provided, according to the present invention, an antibiotic substance having principal activities as a fungicide, larvicide and a cytotoxic agent.
There is further provided according to the present invention a process for the production of such an antibiotic substance which comprises cultivation of a strain of Streptomyces X-4357 in an aqueous nutrient under submerged aerobic conditions and thereafter isolating and recovering the compound from said solution.
The organism producing the antibiotic of the present invention is a new species designated Streptomyces X-4357. A culture of the living organism, given the laboratory designation X-4357, has been deposited in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Reserch Service, NRRL, Peoria, Ill., and added to its permanent collection of microorganisms as NRRL 11082.
The representative strain of Streptomyces X-4357 has the following characteristics:
Using the criteria of the International Streptomyces Project (ISP) (Shirling and Gottlieb,1966) and the Key of Nonomura (1974)(Tables II, III and IV), the culture appears closest to but not identical with Streptomyces regensis (Shirling and Gottlieb (1972), the spores of the present culture being more developed and the color of the colony surface darker.